Désert de Retz
The Désert de Retz is a garden on the edge of the forêt de Marly in the commune of Chambourcy, in north-central France. It was created at the end of the 18th century by the aristocrat François Racine de Monville on his 40-hectare (99-acre) estate. The architect Boullée was involved in the creation of both Monville's town houses; it is less likely he had much do with the Désert de Retz, although Monville did, for a while, engage him as assistant to the architect Francois Barbier until 1780. Monville probably designed many of the features and structures himself, or had a strong supervisory role.The garden included between 17 and 20 structures, of which ten still survive, mostly referring to classical antiquity. Those buildings included a summer house (the "colonne brisée", or ruined column), in the form of the base of a shattered column from an imaginary gigantic temple, an ice house in the form of an Egyptian pyramid, an obelisk, a colonnaded temple dedicated to Pan, an open-air theatre, a ruined Gothic Chapel and a Chinese pavilion. This was one of a number of landscape gardens created in France at the time influenced by English examples. Its style could be described as Anglo-Chinois, or French landscape garden.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Désert de Retz (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).Désert de Retz
Chemin De Sainte-Gemme, Saint-Germain-en-Laye
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Geographical coordinates (GPS)
Latitude | Longitude |
---|---|
N 48.892777777778 ° | E 2.0155555555556 ° |
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Chemin De Sainte-Gemme
Chemin De Sainte-Gemme
78240 Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Ile-de-France, France
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